Early in 2008 Vanessa Hudgens and Zac Efron had a fairy tale love story that captured the hearts of teenagers and pre-teens worldwide.

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They met when they both starred in High School Musical (HSM), which was a blockbuster movie on the Disney Channel. Vanessa played the starring role of Gabriella Montez and Zac played opposite her starring as Troy Bolton.

Gabriella and Troy shared a love interest in HSM similar to what Vanessa and Zac had in real life. Troy was the high school’s sports hero and Gabriella was a bright student who transferred to East High.

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Although Vanessa and Zac were constantly seen together in Los Angeles, blogheads were continually speculating that their romance was over, but they were always been wrong until the couple finally did break up as Hollywood romances often do.

The blockbusters High School Musical 1 and 2 made stars of Vanessa and Zac, and they were among the most searched celebrities on the Internet. They were also followed everywhere by the paparazzi.

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And it only promised to get bigger and better for the couple, for Disney had started production on High School Musical 3, which premiered in theaters rather than just the Disney Channel. The couple and HSM were so big that the number of views of their videos on Youtube reached into the tens of millions, which was off the charts even by today’s standards.

Many of the photos on this page were taken from Zac and Vanessa’s vacation in Hawaii in 2007. Zac said that a paparazzo caught him off guard because Zac had not yet realized that the couple was so high on the paparazzi radar.

“At that point it (his stardom) was inconceivable,” Zac said. “I had no idea that anyone could ever care. That happens to, like, big stars. I woke up and my dad told me that I was in a newspaper on the beach, (and) he made fun of me. He said I was ‘frolicking.’”

It appears that the paparazzo made a small fortune on the photos. Zac said that while they were still on vacation in Hawaii, “the photographer left me a note with a disc of all the pictures, and on the note it said, ‘Thanks for the Range Rover!’”

The following video stars Zac and Vanessa, is from High School Musical 2 and is entitled “You are the Music in Me.”